As A Mother, I Refuse To Call Courtney Stodden A ‘Slut’

Courtney Stodden sucking on cherryLet’s agree for the sake of agreeing that Courtney Stodden really is 17 years old. You know, 17? A year after you’re legal to drive a car. A year before you are old enough to vote. The age when you are supposed to be picking out your prom dress and applying to colleges. I don’t know what you guys were all doing at age 17. I know I had my first real boyfriend. I know I was not the most well-behaved teenager. I know I was insecure and prone to wearing too much makeup and too short skirts and probably had the occasional hickey on my neck. Or five. I know I snuck cigarettes and drank lukewarm PBR behind the school bleachers and crept out of my room at 3 am. I know at 17 I made a lot of dumb decisions.

My mother never signed a consent form saying that I could marry a 51 year old man that had been married twice previously. I didn’t even know any 51 year old men who weren’t relatives or school teachers. Back then plastic surgery wasn’t as common as it is now. The idea of putting silicone in my chest to make it bigger would have scared me to death. There weren’t tanning beds on every corner. Or the Twitter/Facebook thing. I got grounded. A lot.

Let’s agree for the sake of agreeing that there are a lot of really brilliant teenage girls. Because there are. Hello Rookie magazine! There are 17 year old girls who are in college, studying to be the doctors, the politicians, the school teachers of our future. There are 17 year old girls who spend their weekends volunteering with the homeless, at animal shelters, for the Big Sisters Program. There are 17 year old silicone-free girls who have never entered a tanning salon.

And then we have Courtney Stodden.

Let’s agree for the sake of agreeing that Courtney is a trainwreck. We have all seen the photos and watched the tabloid TV interviews and read the articles and blog posts. We have argued about her real age and wondered what type of mother lets her daughter marry a 51 year old. We have all rolled our eyes at Courtney in the pumpkin patch and cringed at her alliteration-ridden titillating twitter tweets. Here are just a few comments I found about her online:

“17 year old superslut. Whore child-bride. Skanky supernova.”

“And that bitch looks like she is a hard-used two bit hooker from Vegas that’s been kicked out of the strip club for being too old.”

“spray-tanned, plastic-titted gossip stroke mag whore ..”

“The world needs sluts like this. Chicks who just let you ruin them.I t’s what makes the world go around.”

“Agreed. She’s just a set of tits and three holes.”

“I would put my dick in this girls ass without a doubt! But afterwards I would put a bullet right in her head. This girl sucks”¦.”*

But I’m going to ask you all to disagree. If you agree with the statements I have posted above then I’m asking you to disagree with the exploitation of a young girl. We don’t know a lot about Courtney Stodden’s upbringing.  We don’t know what type of parents raised her. We do know at one point she was wearing diapers and crying when she was cold, tired or hungry. I have a daughter, and I think of her and how she will probably do some dumb things in her own life, probably nothing as extreme as Courtney, but haven’t we all done some dumb things? Like I said, there are a lot of really smart 17 year olds. But at that age, were you are smart as you were at age 25? At age 40? Something went wrong somewhere with Courtney Stodden. Whether it was bad parenting or neglect or exploitation, we don’t know. But I do know, if she is 17, like we are being told, we are all pretty awful people for calling a 17 year old girl a “slut.” Yes, even with the scantily clad press photos and Penthouse letters twitter feed.[tagbox tag=”Courtney Stodden”]

And it’s not just men calling this young girl a slut. It’s women. Women with daughters Courtney’s age. Mothers who would be furious if anyone ever called their own daughter a slut. Women who consider themselves “feminists” and who would blink back tears when reading about a 17 year old girl being raped in their local newspapers. One can argue that at 17 a girl should know what she is doing, understand that if she poses half-dressed and talks about “making love” to her husband she should expect the type of comments she is getting. But at age age 17, even though I was amazingly smart and all ready in college, I was still an idiot in many ways. I think a lot of us were. So even if you’re not commenting that you’d sodomize Courtney and then shoot her in the face, by adding to the Internet vitriol you aren’t exactly adding anything new to an all ready pathetic situation. Yes, Anderson Cooper, we all think you are so clever for doing your smug Courtney Stodden imitations, but as an adult shouldn’t you be focusing your criticisms on the adults involved, say her parents or her husband?

I’m not going to be calling Courtney Stodden a slut. I would never call a 17 year old girl that, no matter how she dresses or behaves. I’m a woman, and a mother and I don’t think typing insults at this girl is going to “shame” her into changing her behavior or make her reach her potential. As a mom I think about how I would feel if someone called my kid a slut. Granted, I’m not sure Stodden’s mother cares, and it seems like she is hoping her daughter’s internet antics will result in a managerial paycheck for her, but we all need to remember before she was in stilettos she was in Pampers. I’m not going to call her a slut because as a mother of a daughter I hope my own daughter never encounters that word when she is a 17 year old. Instead I’ll be whispering a prayer** that my own daughter never turns out like her. And I’ll add one in for Courtney that something magical happens and she divorces her pedophile husband and decides to go to college.

* I found all of the above headlines and comments online.

** I’m not a religious person, but I pray a lot in regard to my children, stray animals, and when I’m on an airplane.

You can follow Eve Vawter @EveVawter.

(photo: poponthepop.com)

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